DEMO conference shows us what comes after Web 2.0

By Dean TakahashiMercury News

Posted:
02/01/2007 02:17:06 AM PST

Updated:
02/01/2007 02:17:08 AM PST

PALM DESERT - Six minutes is all the presenters at the DEMO conference get to convince an audience of movers and shakers that their new technology is the sexiest. It's the ultimate cattle call. The presenters are nervous. The audience is restless for bio breaks.

After a full day of watching presentations, I've been diligently paying attention and listening to what has begun to sound like a continuous pitch of the same kind of company. It goes like this: We've moved from a model where technology is at the center to one where people are at the center, as described by Chris Shipley, executive producer of the conference.

These companies are assuming that we're ready to move on from the world of Web 2.0, where we create our own blogs or podcasts, to one where we go online to create and share our own books, photo albums, broadcasts, greeting cards and movies.

There is a multitude of companies offering the tools to do this. Here are some:

Ink2 (www.ink2.com/demo) allows you to search through a library of artwork and create personalized greeting cards. You can find an old comic book cover, set it as the greeting card cover, insert a picture on the inside, and then tap
With OurStory, you can go on the Web and create memory books of family members, creating a timeline for their lives and attaching videos, pictures, audio or text at certain points in their lives. Family members can click through the whole show and order a print of a book.

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SharedBook does something similar, letting you make a book out of a departed loved one's guest book or just about anything archived on the Web. Other companies such as Yodio, Pangea, Mixpro and PreClick also let you create and share things with your friends, families and the whole world.

A company called eJamming showed how musicians can play songs and synchronize the music so that they can do live jams with friends across the Internet. EJamming's chief executive got up on stage at DEMO on Wednesday and crooned Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" to a storm of applause.

SplashCast of Portland, Ore., assumes you want to be a broadcaster. It has created a video player that you download to your computer and use to create and share videos, blog posts or audio podcasts. Today, kids like embedding YouTube videos on their MySpace pages that show off their personalities. SplashCast's player allows them to create a channel, where they can constantly update the videos in the player on a regular schedule.

You can distribute the SplashCast player to friends and they can become outlets that display your video on their own blogs or MySpace pages. Then you can track how much your videos are being viewed around the world. All of your friends can thus become the avenue to syndicate your shows that everyone can see.

If you've got a good show, it can spread across the globe and you can watch it grow. Michael Berkley, the SplashCast chief executive who grew up in Palo Alto, says the company has been quiet since its founding in 2004. It has raised $1.3million and has nine employees. After unveiling it this week, consumers have already created more than 1,000 channels with it.

"This is taking consumers to the next level," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research. "I'm 48. My daughter is 11. She's ready for this. I'm not."

There are, of course, plenty of companies at DEMO that don't fit into this theme. Shipwire.com charges $30 to become the shipping and warehouse arm of a small business. It will stock the small business's inventory in its warehouse and ship it to dozens of countries, expanding the reach of companies across the globe.

Devicescape Software of San Bruno has created software that enables laptops, mobile phones or other Web gadgets to access WiFi wireless networks more easily. You go to a Web site and plug in the devices you own, type in the user names and passwords for WiFi networks that you want to access, and when you visit the local hot spots you no longer have to type in everything to go online.

These companies are shooting for the big payout from DEMO. They want investors or consumers to notice them. IronPort Systems, an anti-spam company in San Bruno, came back on stage to DEMO after presenting in 2003. They just sold out to Cisco Systems for $830 million.

Will they all succeed like IronPort? No. I think it's going to take a lot longer to turn us all from couch potatoes into budding Shakespeares. But one can hope.